In this sermon, the pastor discusses the troubled state of the world and predicts that it will become even more troubled in the next 10 years. He emphasizes that there are three types of people in the world: those who are afraid, those who don't know enough to be afraid, and those who have forgotten God's mercy and are rebellious. The pastor highlights the deep sorrow and anguish of the prophet Jeremiah, who wept and groaned for his people. He emphasizes the importance of the word of God and the need for the church to regain the Holy Ghost fire in order to avoid the impending judgment and purification through fire. The pastor references Moses and his encounter with God speaking out of the fire, and concludes that the church must go through the fire to be purified and hear the voice of God.

Father, we thank you tonight for this wonderful story. We thank you for the Christ. We sing joyfully, so often living he loved me, dying he saved me, buried he carried my sins far away, rising he justified, freely forever. But we thank you for the capstone of this. One day he's coming to this troubled, distorted, wicked world in which we live. Coming for a bride. A church that's pure, without spot, without wrinkle. A company of people out of the church. Just as you took the bride out of the side of Adam, we believe you will take a bride out of the church. A holy people, a sanctified people, a people who have already announced everything of the world. And chosen the path of virtue and holiness to walk in purity. To walk straight, straight in this twisted world. To walk pure in this corrupt world. To walk obedient in this disobedient world in which we live. Lord Jesus, I ask that you may seal the travail of your soul tonight in this meeting. Again I pray you'll make it a bad night for the devil. Make it a glorious night for our Lord Jesus Christ. Set the captives free, undo heavy burdens, take away oppression, take away doubt, take away fear. Come with a great wave of cleansing. Lord I pray for this precious pastor, I love him as much as he loves me. I thank you for his witness, I thank you for his character, I thank you for his integrity. I thank you for the love he has for yourself and the love he has for his flock. Lord I ask tonight that when in the scenes of glory we sing the new, new song, we'll look back to this night and remember that there was something added to our faith, something added to our vision, something added to our concept of the majesty of being a child of God by faith in Jesus Christ. We thank you for your word. We know how many times it's been burned and banished and blamed, but it still lives. Great empires have perished but it's survived them, it's survived all the criticisms of men. I thank you Lord it has a wonderful habit of standing at the graveside of its persecutors. Because you said heaven and earth may pass away but my word shall never pass away. And therefore Lord we ask for wisdom to preach it and understanding to hear it. Again we pray get glory to your great name and bless every place in America tonight or in the world where the gospel is being preached in its power, in its purity, in its possibilities. Yes we love you. Let's sing. I'm not going to strike this up properly. I'll try. My Jesus I love thee, I know thou art mine. For thee, for thee all of all is of sin. My gracious redeemer, my gracious redeemer, my savior if ever. Well I sincerely hope your faith is stronger than your singing. All right let's get to the word. Thank you. The brother that does the taping asked me just prior to the meeting what's the title of your message tonight? Well it's a very strange title I guess because I happen to be strange myself. The title is The Man God Tore Apart. The Man God Tore Apart. I want to begin in Matthew chapter 16 and verse 16. Oh let me start, pardon me, verse 13. When Jesus came into the coast of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples saying whom do men say that I am? I the son of man am. He said some say that thou art John the Baptist, others Elias, others Jeremias, or one of the prophets. And he said unto them, notice he said to the growth of them, but whom do ye say that I am? Of course Peter was always there with a ready answer. And immediately he shoots out the word Simon Peter answered and said thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. That's one of the greatest confessions in the whole of the word of God, particularly again in the New Testament. Now without looking you could think of Mark chapter 11. In Mark 11 it says this that Peter began to curse and swear and say I don't know him. To me pastor this is a classical case of backsliding. Well why didn't you turn the thing around and say the bad thing first and cover it up? Because it's not true historically. Whom do I, this man remember has come onto the stage. They've been through a series of revolutions. There's a gap between Malachi and Matthew of 400 years. 400 years without any prophetic voice. 400 years without any prophetic light. And then suddenly dramatically there's a strange man in the wilderness. Very strange. He had no newsletter. He had no choir. He had no support. And this radical man comes and they said of him this is Elijah that has come back again. This had upset the whole community. It had upset the Jews. Then immediately after they get rid of John Baptist. You know I get lots of young men call me or send me letters and say God has called me to be a John the Baptist. And if I'm talking on the phone I say have you increased your insurance? And they say why? I say you're only going to live six months. If you want to be John Baptist take all that goes but you get your head chopped off. I wonder if Jimmy Swaggart's still got a head on his shoulders. After all he said on TV. I admire him greatly. I don't think John Baptist would preach 10 minutes before he got switched off all over the nation. But immediately after John Baptist when they're saying are you the Christ? No no no no. He said am I the Christ? I'm not worthy to undo the shoes that he has. The sandals and carry his lap and carry his shoes. Oh there's one coming. I think I've got a good stretch of humor in me. I like to preach the Baptist because I tell them the first man that ever preached the baptism of the Holy Ghost was not a Pentecostal it was a Baptist. And then I like to tell the Baptists at the Pentecostals they weren't first on the parade either. John comes declaring one shall come and he shall baptize you not with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Not in the Greek with Holy Ghost fire. Because our God is a consuming fire. Thou art the Christ the son of the living God. An awesome confession. And now he's saying I don't know him. I never saw him. I don't believe in him. The same Peter. He'd slept with Jesus in the fields. They had no accommodation. The son of man had nowhere to lay his head and Peter slept with him. Peter walked on the water once. Peter took a piece of bread and every time he broke it it multiplied. Jesus gave five loaves to 12 disciples so then he must have broken them. Otherwise you'd have Peter walking like this with loaves of bread under his chin. He took bread and break it and it multiplied. He'd heard the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest man that ever lived. The Sermon on the Mount which has an answer to all our problems today. There's really only one problem in the world. It's in your family maybe, in your business, in the city. The one problem is the problem of human relationships. We can't live with each other. And the Sermon on the Mount answers all those questions. And this man had heard the Sermon on the Mount. He'd seen Jesus raised from the dead. He took with him Peter, James, and John on every outstanding occasion. And yet he denies him. He was in the most glorious event in the life of Jesus up to that time on the Mount of Transfiguration when the glory of God came upon him. And Peter was there and now he swears and curses. He was there when he raised Darius, Darius' daughter from the dead. And yet he's vehement in his denial. Sound incredible, Pastor? How could a man who knew so much and saw so much suddenly betray his master? Well tell me why did you do it on a certain occasion when it was convenient? Why did you back out? A very famous hymn writer was in a one of those swell restaurants out in California some years ago. A friend of a friend of mine was eating with them. Oh it was one of these super-duper places, you know, with gentlemen, waiters at tables and the tarot's over there, whatever you call them. And they all sat there quietly and then one man said, why don't we say grace? And this famous character says, I said grace. Oh, you mean when you took your glasses off and didn't want anybody to know you were praying? You're a coward. I'm a coward yet you didn't say grace in front of the people. Well he said, you say it. So he said, all right. So he got his handkerchief out like this nice clean one I've got. He put it there down in the restaurant and he knelt down and he said, heavenly father. He said, shut up. We sing at the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light. Then will he own my worthless name before his father's face? No, he said, if you're ashamed of him or not he'll be ashamed of you in heaven. And yet here's this man, whom do men say that I am? Some say what? Notice nobody said he was like Moses, the mightiest man that ever lived, as regards in the opinion of some Jews. What'd they say? Some say thou art Elias, and some say you're John the Baptist risen from the dead, and some say you're Jeremiah. Well how do they know they'd never seen Jeremiah? No photographs of him around. Nobody living had ever seen him. Well what's the point of contact? Why is Jesus like Jeremiah? Because in my judgment Jeremiah was the man of sorrows until the man of sorrows himself came. Jeremiah was a man who wept and groaned, and I'll tell you about it a little bit later here. Oh let's go back to go to Jeremiah right now, shall we do that? I was thinking as I while the pastor was talking, you know we're living in a very troubled world, but it's going to get 10 times more trouble before the next 10 years are through, the next five are through. There are just three kinds of people in the world tonight. Not blacks and whites and the yellow people out in other countries, just three kinds of people in the world tonight. Number one those who are afraid, number two those who don't know enough to be afraid, and number three those who know God. We're moving into that phrase that's spoken of in Hebrews where everything that can be shaken will be shaken. God's going to shake America like a terrier shakes a rat. He's going to shake this generation as far as that goes. He's going to glorify his son whatever it costs if he has to wreck the IBM and everybody else. The supreme glory of God that is his son is going to sit as a ruler over the world. I guess you know that my two main things in my thinking for the last 60 years, number one is prayer and number two is revival. The destiny of America is not in the hands of the White House and if Pat Robertson runs as president, I believe he will, it's not in his hands either. The destiny of America is not in the White House, it's in God's house. If we clean the house up, which means you and I get cleaned up. Do you know honestly my heart I'm glad I have no children these days. I wonder if you heard Jimmy Swaggart this morning, he was pretty tough. I wish you could have got all the statistics he gave. Now this book is not a book, it's a library. There are 66 books in this little wonderful book, isn't it wonderful? There are 66 chapters in the prophecy of Isaiah. The first part of the book is chapters 1 to 39. The second part of the book is chapters 40 to 66. In the first chapters 1 to 39, holiness is spoken of 12 times. In chapters 39 to 66, holiness is spoken of 17 times. The whole theme of that wonderful, wonderful book is about the holiness and majesty of God. Do yourself a favor, read the 40th chapter once every day this week, do you a lot of good. So the theme of Isaiah is holiness. That's not the theme of Jeremiah, though he speaks of it. This marvelous book of Jeremiah, which some people think is the greatest one in the whole of the word of God, the theme of Jeremiah is backsliding. He uses the word 13 times. It's only used four times in the Bible and that's in Hosea where he uses it four times. He'll heal your backsliding and love you freely. There was an old Jewish teacher here in America some years ago. His name was Bucks Basin and he was a very super brilliant man. He had a grip on Hebrew like very few people and he loved to move in and out of the major prophets and the minor prophets. I don't know what he wrote, I have one book of his on Isaiah, but he speaks about this class of people that we call prophets. I believe that when God Almighty is angry with the nation he gives it no prophets. There isn't a prophet in America I know of. Somebody issued a paper recently, I'm going to a conference, I'm not sure I'm going in January, they put my name on and they put there Leonard is another Jeremiah. That's nonsense. I'm not fit to carry his shoes. They're a unique breed of men. I had a young man preacher came in my office last Monday. He said, Brother Ravenhill, you say there's not much majestic preaching anymore. No, there's not. What about those men you talk about, the Puritans, like Robert Owen, John Owen, and Hawker, and a whole bunch of others. What's the secret that they gave us such a massive theology? Gave us awesome revelations of God, where people went out of the sanctuary on tiptoe, they didn't want to break the spell that was on them. How is it they could preach like that? I'll tell you why. Because they lived in eternity, that's why. They lived and moved and had their being in God. The prophets are unique. Bux Basin says the prophet by the very nature of his calling is a tragic figure. He has a fierce loyalty toward God. I love that phrase. A fierce loyalty, a fierce loyalty. He isn't a sputtering candle, he's more like an assettling welder's blast, you know, the thing he uses, the torch. He has a fierce loyalty to God and he has a tremendously broken heart over a stupid, wicked generation in which he lives. And he's pulled toward God and he's pulled toward the nation. Jeremiah is, again in my judgment, it's the greatest book on backsliding. He mentioned it thirteen times. I think he's the only prophet in the Old Testament who from the moment he took office to the moment he died had continuous warfare with the people. The prophet diagnoses, he doesn't put any band-aids on. He does spiritual surgery. He lets people know exactly what he's saying and what God, you see, what prophets do? They live with God till they see like God, they love like God, they hate like God. They have a holy anger. Some of us get, you get angry if your children do some little trivial thing in the house. Have you ever wondered what would happen to you if you, if you, if God was, God was as short-tempered with you as you are with your children? Hmm? You might come to church with a black eye now and again, or a broken jaw, or a broken leg. Yes, this man, well let me say this and then pass on. Some of us love an old hymn by Samuel Rutherford. Collected out of his writings, with mercy and with judgment he says, my web of time he wove. But this man often brings judgment without mercy. If you go into chapter four of this same book of Jeremiah, he uses some very strange language here. But remember you're talking with one of the most unique characters in the world. This is him describing his spiritual state. In chapter four and verse 19 he says, my bowels, my bowels, I'm pained at my very heart. My heart maketh a noise within me. I cannot hold my peace because thou hast thou heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet. He talks about what? His heart. He talks about his bowels. Skip over now to chapter two, pardon me, chapter two in Lamentations. That's the next book, the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Lamentations chapter two and verse, for my convenience here, anyhow, verse 11. This is the same man again, he says, my eyes do fail with tears. My bowels are troubled. My liver is poured out on the earth for the destruction of the daughter of my people. In other words, this man is absolutely disintegrated. Go to the next chapter in Lamentations, then I'll start preaching. Lamentations chapter three and verse 11. He hath turned aside my ways and pulled me in pieces. I think the American version says, he has torn me in pieces. The Rotherham version says the same thing. My heart is moved, my liver is torn. This man is totally disrupted because the nation is disrupted. The last thought in the mind of a prophet is self-preservation. We're taught it's the first thing in our thinking. First thought reaction is self-preservation. It's the last thought in the mind of this man of God, or any other true man of God as far as I'm concerned. Let me tell you why he's in this state of terrible agitation. Lamentations chapter two, verse one. How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud of his anger? Cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel and remembered not his footstool. Remember that Isaiah says the earth is his footstool. He remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger. Verse three, he hath cut in his fierce anger all the whole of Israel. Down to verse five, the Lord was an enemy and he swallowed up Israel. He swallowed up her palaces. He swallowed up her palaces and he destroyed his strongholds. He's increased the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation and he has violently taken away his tabernacle, his presence, as if it were a garden. He hath destroyed his places of the assembly of the Lord and caused the solemn feasts and Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion. And hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king of the priests and the priests. The Lord hath cast off his altar. Let's go to the ninth chapter and verse one. Prophets are God's emergency men in crisis hours. Not only is America in a crisis, now the whole world is in a crisis. Isn't it fantastic? When I was a boy, the Arabs all lived in tents. Now they own half of America. They've a stranglehold on the oil of America. They've billions of money here. The whole world has been distorted and changed again since World War, World War I actually. This nation is in a state of chaos. With all that God has done for them, they're as bad and as blind and as rebellious and wicked as Peter. The nation here is the nation he delivered with his own right hand. He took them through the Red Sea. He brought water out of Iraq. He destroyed all their enemies behind them in the Red Sea and yet they've forgotten God, forgotten his mercy, forgotten his graciousness. In chapter nine and verse one, this amazing man says, O that my head were waters, mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night. This is the man who says his bowels are torn, his heart is broken, his liver is disturbed. And yet he's not crying for a supernatural ministry. He's not saying, let me do more miracles than Moses. He says, I live in a dying, rebellious, sinful nation. We're exactly in that position today. I'm going to write Jimmy Straggett tomorrow over his office and ask for all the statistics he gave this morning. They were alarming. Two days ago on the news, Friday night news, they said there are two million people in the American Armed Forces who have AIDS or diseases associated with AIDS. There's another disease now that's hardly known. I talked with a physician recently about it. It's some kind of thing that comes only to women. It enters the body maybe at 16 years of age. There's no sign of it. The x-rays can't find it. The doctor can't diagnose it. You don't break out in a rush. There is not one single thing to let you know you've got that disease. But it's going to work its time out. If you're 16 now, maybe when you're 22 you won't have a baby. You won't have one. There's a group of people I can't remember where in the Old Testament. When they disobeyed God, he dried up the wounds of every woman in Israel. I believe God's going to dry up thousands and thousands of wounds. His answer to people who've had their babies thrown down the toilet. Go back a minute please to Jeremiah chapter one. Verse four says, the word of the Lord came unto me saying, before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. I believe, disagree if you like, you're free to do that. I believe that every child that's conceived in a woman's womb already has a mark. God knows it. Everyone that we've, we've taken, how many did Stragget say this morning? A horrible number of millions of babies have been destroyed since 1980. Every one of those babies was marked in the womb of its mother. And the mother's going to face that babe one day at the judgment seat as far as I'm concerned. He says before, verse four, before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. Before thou camest out of the womb, I sanctified thee and ordained thee. Somebody brought a little boy around England a few years ago, said this little boy is five years of age. He's the youngest ordained minister in history. This is the youngest ordained minister in history. He's ordained in his mother's womb. Well, I can't remember being in my mother's womb. But the first day I came back from college, my mother said, this is a great day. I said, it is, mother. This great day to come home, why is it great to you? I said, for some good food. I'm tired of college junk. No, she said, Len, I want to tell you something. I never told you this before. The first day you were born, I laid my hand on you in the bed and said, God, make this boy a preacher or don't let him live. I'm glad I didn't hear that I'd have been terrified. When you were still in the womb, I sanctified you. I separated you. I ordained you to be a leader. No, a prophet. Prophets are greater than kings. Prophets are greater than scientists. Prophets are greater than inventors. Prophets are greater than men who walk on the moon. Prophets know the heart of God. They know the compassion of God. They know the anger of God. They know the fear that God has. They're a breed apart. You can go to college, they may make you a preacher of a sort. They have an assembly line, you know, you drop off at the end and you've got an outline on every book in the Bible and a few bits of theology. You can make a preacher, trainer. You cannot make a prophet. They're God's priority, then they're a brand. This man, as soon as he had eyes to see and was old enough to walk around, I believe the Spirit bore witness with him that like John the Baptist, he was pure. He never touched anything impure. He separated unto God to be a prophet. He said, and then verse 6 says, he said, I am Lord. O Lord God, and behold I cannot speak for I am a child. Listen to this, verse 9. Then the Lord put forth his hand. That's the hand that went to a wall and chiseled the ten commandments on it. A hand of omnipotence. A hand with dreadful power. And that mighty hand that flung the world into space is gentle enough to touch the lips of this wonderful man that he has ordained. That's what it says. I've touched thy mouth and the Lord said, behold I have put my words in thy mouth, dear Lord. I wonder how many preachers could stand up tonight and say this morning when I preached to the crowd, I didn't preach a thought of my own, I didn't preach a word. God put those words in my mouth. They're not my words, they're not my theology, they're not my doctrine. I try to live as near to the heart of God as I can. I know when he speaks. I know when he breaks my heart. I know when he gives me anger, which I need. Why was Jesus, why was Jeremiah like Jesus? Because Jeremiah wept, Jesus wept. Where did he weep? Oh, you say at the tomb of Lazarus. Why, was he mourning? No, he was grieved at the dumbness of the disciples. He wasn't grieving because of them, he was grieving because the disciples were so unbelieving. Then you remember he came to Jerusalem and he looked down there and he saw the city and he wept over it. And when he got there he whipped them. In the days of his flesh when Jesus came he cleansed the temple. I believe if he came today he cleansed the pulpit first of all. He cleansed the temple. Why did he weep over them? Well, I'll give you my opinion of it. I believe as he looked at that temple, it wasn't the same temple of course, it was a modern one built by Herod. But it was standing on the site of the previous temple. Jesus sees those priests going down the street. He looks at the temple, it has no glory of God, it's empty, it's barren. He looked at those streets, Jeremiah walked on those streets, Hezekiah walked on those streets. All the minor prophets walked on those streets. And once the temple was filled with the glory of God and now you can smell the stink of animals there. You can hear the blowing of the sheep and you hear the oxen. And he sees the house of God deserted. I was going to say I want to see one thing before I die, whenever that is. I want to see the temple as it was in Solomon's day when he plastered the walls with gold and he made the reading desk of gold and it was the most costly building ever in history. He did everything of good into the commandment, then he had to wait, he had to wait, what happened? A beast had to be slain. And it says that when he fulfilled all those demands God made, and Solomon lifted his eyes, the glory of God came to such a degree he couldn't minister. The priests had to back off out of the house, the shekinah glory of God. It's something we've never seen. We're blessed if you stir our emotions, tell us something nice. But come on, when have you last left the sanctuary blinded with God's glory? Not necessarily a physical light, but in your inner mind you felt that this is something I haven't touched in the last 10 or 20 years. You're left in speechless wonder. I preached in Wales in 1949, I guess, in an assembly of God church in a town called Aberraman up in the Aberdare Valley. After about five nights I went to a house after the meeting and I had a cup of tea and some cookies as you say, we say biscuits. And the lady, Mrs. Lewis said, you know they have an intonation, they sing when they talk. When you sing I think they've got a mouse running up and down my back. And she said, Brother Ravenhill, these are the most wonderful meetings since the Welsh Revival. Well the Welsh Revival was 1904. I said, well what's the point of similarity? She said, well we came up the hill and everybody in Wales is either Thomas or Griffiths or Jones. We came up to the crossroads and when we got there we turned in Welsh, Welsh Gaelic, they say nostar for good night. I turned to Mrs. Griffith, nostar. She turned to Mrs. Thomas, nostar. Mrs. Thomas turned to me, nostar, good night. Then one lady said, have you noticed something? Have you noticed something about these meetings? What? We walked up the crossroads every night, never said a word since we left the tabernacle. We were speechless with the glory and power of God. There have been no physical miracles. There have been spiritual miracles. But God came in such overwhelming glory. He presented himself in his holiness. We live in a day when we're more afraid of holiness than we are of sinfulness. The Lord put his hand and touched my mouth and said, I have put these words in thy mouth. Now here's his commission. He says, see this day I've set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out, to pull down, to destroy, to throw down, to build and to plant. Isn't that something? I would to God every preacher in the nation. I hope I'm an example of it in some ways tonight. Every preacher could say every time he stands, God put these words in my mouth. He wouldn't let me sleep for two nights. He put these words in my mouth. I would like to preach another message tonight, but I changed it. Because I believe God wants this word to go forth. I say this man was in constant warfare with the nations, Israel and Judah. Why? How did he sustain his power all the way through? I'll tell you how. Because it says in chapter 5 verse 14, thy word is as a fire in my heart. The world goes to hell fire tonight. Do you know why? Because the church has lost holy ghost fire. Because the word of the preacher doesn't burn in our hearts anymore. There's no escaping fire. Moses met God speaking out of the fire. A preacher called me from California last Monday and he asked me what my view was of the next few years. And I said, for what it's worth, here it is. What's your view? He said, Brother Rayneal, the church is going into the fire. It's only there she's purified. It's only there you hear the voice of God. Here's Moses, he's run away from the greatest empire in the world. It says in Hebrews 11, he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king. And what did he do? He esteemed the reproach of Christ. Come on, tell me in God's name. Pastor, how did he know about Christ in that day? He was in a heathen country, in a heathen court. Maybe like the apostle, he was caught up into the third heaven at some place. I guess those royal robes didn't last too long that he ran away in, smelly old sheep around him. And he sees a bush where they passed a hundred times, but this time it's ablaze. You never have to advertise a fire, whether it's physical or spiritual. It was from the burning bush that God spoke. It was in a furnace that was heated seven times hotter, where those three Hebrew boys were. It was there they saw the glory of God. Our neighbors, our people don't see much glory in us. Why? Because we've no fire to persecute us. Let the fire come, it will separate the chaff all right from the wheat. The three Hebrew children were bound up and thrown in a fire. What did the fire do? Well, the boys forgot their penknife, you know, they couldn't reach to cut their ropes or their hands. And all the fire did was burn off them what the world put on them. And friend, that thing you won't shed, it's binding you. God Almighty will burn it off you. He'll give you the chance to repent and get rid of it, maybe tonight. And you won't, but he'll get it. What did Shraggart say this morning? You may be behind on your tithes, but listen, God's going to get it. You know what he'll do? He'll shrink your business till he's got every dime out of you and let somebody else have it. You won't give it to God, you'll give it to somebody else. You'll get super-taxed or some other way. We forget this world is God's, it's His. We're here temporary. The symbol of the church of Jesus, excuse me pastor, is not a cross. That's pagan, that's cruel. The symbol of the church of Jesus Christ is a tongue of fire that sat on each of their heads. I remember praying one Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening. I guess many have read that wonderful little book, God's Smuggler. I happen to give the title for that book, I feel happy about that. The man in the book, Brother Andrews, refers to a man by the name of Uncle Hoppy. He was like me, he's an odd, odd character. But I like that guy. We had a half night of prayer where we prayed at nine, we were still praying at one, nearly two o'clock in the morning. A lady in a wheelchair sat at the back and she said, Brother Ray, that was a marvelous night, wasn't it? I said, well I thought so. I wonder what the dear soul felt like sitting there hour after hour. She must have been there nearly six hours in a She said, did you feel it? I said, well about one o'clock or just after I felt a tremendous urge. You didn't see it? No. A tongue of fire came on the first brother at the end and it went on to every one of your heads. Do you wonder that we felt a surge of power and life? He should baptize you with holy ghost fire. Remember Revelation says, I would get either hot or cold. Isn't it amazing that Side two. It's the church that's pretending. She's not hot, she's not cold, she's in between the two. She's a compromiser. She finds it easy to live that way. You know what? I feel the cup of iniquity is filling very fastly for America. I'm so old at times I think I'm antique. But I remember during when I was about, well I was born in 1907. I won't tell you the day, I don't want you know a lot of presents coming to the house. I was born in 1912. I was at school with a flag in my hand and we were singing about the British Empire. It was a time when the British Empire boasted that the sun never sets on the the greatest, most fabulous empire that ever lived. Far beyond the power of the Roman Empire. And I remember as a boy, I was about maybe 12, maybe a bit older. I picked up a piece of poetry. I've always liked poetry. I've only seen that poem once ever since as far as I know. I'll try and recall it. If I break down you'll understand. The poem said this, O England thou privileged nation. How truly thy children are blessed. Thou hast since the great reformation had liberty, riches and rest. Such blessings are not of thy making. It is God who has given thee all. But if divine laws thou art breaking, like Babylon do too thou shalt fall. Thine armies and navies will fail thee if thus the Lord's God thou forsake. Political schemes won't avail thee if sacred commandments thou break. For God has his eyes on this nation. O England, to thee will be sent the doom of thy just condemnation. Except, ah, except thou repent. We used to sing a hymn in England. I think this is an old, Methodist hymn book, so. But it's not on loan. I want to read a poem here too. Well, some of you who went to school have heard of Rudyard Kipling, I'm sure. I think he wrote The Road to Manderley. Periodically the best of the poets are gathered and they vote for the king of poetry. They call him the poet laureate. Kipling was to get that place but somebody pushed him out and Alfred Lord Tennyson got it because they persuaded the Queen of England to give it to him. This is the history of England. This was written in 1865. Here it is. God of our fathers, known of old. God of our far-flung battles line. Beneath whose awful hand we hold dominion over palm and pine. That's the whole British Empire. Beneath whose awful hand we hold dominion over palm and pine. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget. The tumult and the shouting dies. The captains and the kings depart. Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, a humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget. Far called our navies melt away, or dune and headland sinks the pyre. Lo, all our pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre. Judge of the nation, spare us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget. If drunk in sight of power we loose wild tongues that have not thee in awe. Such boasting as the Gentile Jews are lesser breeds without the law. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget. For heathen heart that puts her trust in reeking tube and iron shard. You know, if it was really true, instead of being on our coins in America, if it was on our hearts, in our minds, in God we trust, we wouldn't need an army. We wouldn't need an air force. Go into the book of Kings. One angel was going home one night and he tipped his wing too low. He wiped out a city of 105,000, 150,000 people. The wing of one angel. And what did Jesus say? I could call 12 legions. The smallest number in a legion is 5,000. The largest is 10,000. If one angel can kindle 185,000 people and you could call 12 legions, that would be 60,000 times 125,000. They could wipe the population of the world out in one night without firing a shot. Wasn't it one of your famous presidents who said, I'm not too inspired when you say I'm on God's side. What I want to know, he said, is God on my side. Swaggart again gave statistics that were terrifying today. 17 million people in the nation, a Christian nation, are either homosexuals or lesbians. 17 million. We had a precious boy in our prayer meeting. He comes every Friday night. He's a thoroughbred Indian. I asked him to draw some statistics and I don't have them with me. There are 2 million American Indians in America, the most neglected of all people. Some of them are 95% alcoholic. They're all superstitious. They're all full of fear. It's more exciting to go up the Amazon, isn't it, to say I'm going to Arizona or somewhere else to minister to the Indians of America. They ought to be on our conscience. They ought to be in our prayers. They deserve a place in our love. The iniquity of this nation was awesome. They broke God's Sabbaths. They broke his commandments repeatedly. And he says, I'll take away your glory. I'll take away your tabernacle. I'll take away your presence, my presence. You know, there's a deadline. I'm afraid America and England and so-called Christian countries are very near that deadline. And it's a place where God says my spirit shall not always strive with man, neither individuals nor nations. This is what he says in the second of Thessalonians, chapter 2. And verse 7 he says, the mystery of iniquity doth already work and he who now letteth will let until he be taken out of the way. Then shall that wicked one be revealed whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth. Even him who's coming is after the working of Satan with power and lying wonders, signs and lying wonders. With all deceitfulness and unrighteousness in them that perish because they receive not the love of the truth. You can quote all the statistics you like about venereal disease, about drunkenness, about drugs. That's not the problem tonight. The people of America and England have forsaken the truth of God. He doesn't say they're adulterous. He doesn't say you're building idols. He says that with all deceitfulness and unrighteousness in them that perish because they receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved. So God has given them over to a strong delusion. A strong delusion. There are 2,000 gurus in America tonight. When we left England there was not one. Mohammedan mosque. Tonight there are 500. In the same 20 years that the Mohammedans are taking over England, the Church of England alone has closed down 550 churches. The enemy comes in like a flood. But have we decided to fast and pray till God rends the heaven? Not on your life. Why should we fast and pray? Our refrigerators are full. We've got nice cars. We've all the creature comforts we need. This got hold of me very hard, I'll tell you that. They receive not the truth that they might be saved. Now the next verse is terrible. And God caused them. And God shall send them a strong delusion. We blame the devil. We blame the Mormons. The Mormons church makes three million dollars a day out of its industry. That's a billion a year. A friend brought me from Sweden. He said, my friend came back from America yesterday on the 747. There were 220 Mormon missionaries on the plane and only two Protestant missionaries. The word of God says they'll encompass sea and land to make somebody's seven-fold mortar child of hell than they are themselves. I'm embarrassed at the zeal of the cults. I'm equally embarrassed at the sleepiness of the Church of Jesus Christ. We're living as though we've another million years. Forget it. I've talked with a number of bankers in the last three or four months. Every one of them said this, there'll be a total collapse financially between the next two to the very extreme, the very next five years. I guess many of you read dear old David Wilkerson's book. I wrote the preface to it but I told him I didn't agree with it all anyhow. The part I don't agree with is when he suggests that our greatest enemy is Russia. That's not true. Our greatest enemy is God. Chapter 63 of Isaiah and verse 10, listen to this verse. Now verse 9, in all their afflictions he was afflicted. He went ahead of them coming out of Egypt. He put that shaft of light at night, a pillar of fire, the presence of Jesus, a pillar of cloud in the day to guide them. But listen what it says here in Isaiah chapter 63. In verse 9 it says in all their affliction he was afflicted and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them and bared them and carried them. What else could he do? He redeemed them, he bared them on eagle's wings he says. He carried them in security. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them. He bared them on wings. Other scriptures say he bared them on eagle's wings. He carried them all the days. What did they do? What was their gratitude? They screamed when they were in Egypt because their backs were lashed every day, their skin was torn off with the lictor's lash. They had to stand there treading that mud in the scorching heat. They were slaves, slaves, slaves. Get us out of this, get us out of this. And he got them out. And he sent a river, he split a rock and the water followed them wherever they went. He sent them angels from heaven every day. Do you know they wore the same clothes for 40 years without sending them to the cleaners, isn't that something? Their clear clothes never got sweaty, their shoes never... I just got a new pair, I hope they last for the next 40 years. I may not be around but if it lasts the next 10 they'll be all right. He did miracles in their eating, he did miracles in their wearing, he did miracles in delivering them out of the hand of the enemy. And what did they do? Look at the next verse. Verse 10 says they rebelled and vexed the Holy Spirit. I remember my precious friend Dr. Tozer one day, he said Len I had a Baptist minister here, we're talking about the power of the Spirit and he said well I don't, Mr. Tozer I don't know much about the Holy Ghost. And Tozer gave him a brief history of the coming of the Spirit, the upper and so forth and the different surges of the Holy Ghost. You know the Holy Spirit is easily grieved. This Baptist preacher says if the Holy Spirit left my church we wouldn't even know he'd gone. Everybody's rejoicing now. There are gifts of tongues in how many, a hundred nations right now. Well tongues are for a warning, they're not for the church. The warning is to the sinners. The bloodiest revolution in France was preceded by a purging, they drove out the Huguenots. They were like the Quakers, a quiet people, but they got baptized with the Holy Ghost, became a bit noisy. And they had miracles, they had a repetition of Acts 1 and 2 and 3. But right after the Holy Spirit came on France and they began to speak in tongues, they had a bloodbath. To jump the line here, Azusa Street, the birthplace of modern Pentecost. 1904, ten years after, that was another warning, ten years after the first world war came. I remember 1927 in England, a young man came along, a handsome man as ever I've seen in my life. And he had signs and wonders, George Jeffers it was. I went in his meetings, I was astounded. I saw them bring cripples, twisted and every rotten thing about. You could almost smell one man they dragged out of a ghetto. They laid him at the feet of the preacher and the preacher said, you need something more. It was a deep Welsh voice, you need something more than healing, you need God, you need salvation. It was the worst sample of the devil's work in the whole district of Leeds. He was a blasphemer, he was a liar, he was perverted. You lie there and repent. He didn't say, plead the sinner's prayer, that's led millions of people to hell. There are more people in hell who prayed the sinner's prayer than outside of it. Confession is not repentance. A man isn't saved because he says the Lord's Prayer, I don't care what you say. It seems the modern design is this, come to the meeting, say the Lord's Prayer, pardon me, go up to the pastor, pray the sinner's prayer, we hope you'll join the church. Now you've prayed the sinner's prayer so you're all right. Promise you'll tithe and we'll baptize you. I don't baptize anybody because they confess, I don't baptize anybody in the profession of their faith. I baptize them on the fruits of their faith. Somebody said to John Wesley, that man, that drunken man going down the street, he's one of your converts. He said, he must be, he isn't the Lord's. He won't be back in his drink and his sin if he'd been converted by Christ. One of these days I'm going to preach on the miracle of the new birth. The most wonderful thing that can happen is when God takes a twisted, tormented, perverted human personality, he takes a sinful man out of a sinful world, and makes that man holy, and puts him back in the sinful world, and keeps him holy. It takes all the power of the blood and all the power of the Holy Ghost. Immediately he's really born again. If he's born again, the devil has his number, and he's going to try and trip him up, and pervert him, and seduce him with something. I don't believe there's a denomination in America the devil fears, or in England. What the devil fears is holy men, men who've been purged of every self-interest, self-seeking, self-glory, and it's Christ, Christ, Christ. The Frenchman Monod wrote to him all the bitter shame and sorrow that a time could ever be, and he said in the first line, when it was all of self and none of thee. In the next verse he says it's less of self and more of thee. And finally comes to the place where he says none of self and all of thee. Whenever you are self on your throne, you're vulnerable to the devil, you're vulnerable to temptation. If you get rid of self, and instead of self being on the throne, Christ is on the throne, your life will be revolutionized. They rebelled. I wonder how many rebels we have here tonight. Oh, now often this dear pastor has gone into the closet and prayed for you, the church has prayed for you, the doctor didn't give you much hope, and he restored you, and you made a thousand vows, and you haven't kept one of them. You're rebelling tonight, your prayer life is ragged. Your love life with Jesus is almost nil. You sing, Jesus, you're the lover of my soul, but it's a bit of a lovely poetry set to a lovely tune by Charles Wesley. Yeah, this is pretty drastic, isn't it? There are two reasons at least why we do not have a revival that will shake America. Number one is we're content to live without it. Number two, it's too expensive. I have a little library at home. The other night I went into it, I thought I knew what all my books were, and I'm too stingy to put the light on, you know. So I went in and I got the book, and I didn't get it, I got this one. It's Jonathan Edwards, The Narrative. We had a great preach in England when I was there by the name of Dr. David Martin Lloyd-Jones. He was physician to the King of England, and he also, he was pastor at the Buckingham Gate Chapel. Talking with him one day, he said, Brother Raven, you're going back to America. I said, yes, give my love to Dr. Jones, and I will do that. He said, you know, they had a man in America who was the greatest genius the world has ever known. His name was Jonathan Edwards. Let me give you a little rundown here about this man. All right, Jonathan Edwards entered Yale College, Yale University at the age of 13. He graduated at the age of 17 at the head of his class as a valedictorian, and then he returned as a tutor for two years. Edwards was one of the leading intellects of his day. Again, this was a day of John Owen and all those super puritans that were living. You know, the American schools are not founded by some of these monkey dealers. They teach evolution. So if you see them in the zoo talking to their uncle, don't interfere. After all, you should see your relatives once in a while. You see a man doing this, you know he believes in evolution, or else he's got a bug. Jonathan Edwards, one of the leading intellectuals of his day. He was a robust logician, but he was a humble servant of Christ. Under the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, he probed and penetrated into the deep things of God. Our readers may be tempted to feel that after reading chapter 2 of this book, Jonathan Edwards was a man of keen intellect, but without a burning heart, and the truth is the very opposite. Sure, he preached his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, with a candle in one hand, a stack of notes in the other, and a gravel voice. And as he preached, the Holy Ghost came till they fell off their seats and hung on to the pillars holding up the gallery. He didn't say, pardon me, I didn't mean to upset you. He lashed them with the word of God. He whipped them, he whipped them, he whipped them. They cried for mercy. Do you know a preacher that can do that today? Dare do it? This precious man defended and supported David Brainerd, one of the greatest characters in American history. A man who would go out into the snow, he was very heavy, weighed about 95 pounds. He said, I looked from my tent, and there the Indians were committing fornication or adultery, and they were lying and cheating and fighting, and there was nowhere to pray. So I went out in the forest and prayed. I made a hole in the snow. The snow was up to my chest, up to my chin, and I prayed from sunrise till sunset. Dear God, we can't do that with carpet on the floor. Why did he do it? He was determined to see those Indians, and he saw revival come to those pagans. But like his master, he sweat drops of blood and sweat and tears. This would sound a bit rough to our stranger, yes? Do you know the Puritans said, God Almighty is not under obligation to save one man. Do you think I enjoy preaching? Sure I do. God called me. I take as a crack in the throat of the fact that he called me to preach. I love to preach. In one sense, I hate to preach. I see you as a congregation, and I'll see you at midnight. I'll see you at one o'clock in the morning. You see, some of you are hearing God's call tonight for the very last time. He doesn't owe you anything. He called you, you refused. Do you remember what the people did? They said, we get rid of Jesus. And he said, you're too late. I'm getting rid of you. Your house is left desolate. And from that day to this, they've been a football for all the nations in the world. When I was a little boy, brother Ray, they used to tell me, keep your eye on the Middle East. The most explosive part of the world is the Middle East. The Jews are still going to get kicked out of Israel. And when they come back, they'll come back weeping like Jeremiah. They'll come back with remorse. They'll come back, why? Even before they see him whom they pierced, they'll come back with broken hearts. They'll have seen their children ravaged. They'll have seen their country ravaged. But these men are amazing. They said, God Almighty is not obligated to save one person. You know, we go to meetings now. Do you know what my dread is in America? The Southern Baptists have between 200 and 300 evangelists. The different types of Pentecostals have about 500 evangelists. But neither the Pentecostals nor the Baptists have a revivalist. The last revivalist in America was a Baptist by the name of Mordecai Ham. An old man told me one day, did you ever meet Mordecai Ham? I wish I had. He said he would come to a town like Tyler with a tent. And by the third night, he needed a police escort to get him on the platform, a police escort to get him home. Why? Because he blasted sin in high places. He blasted the breweries. He blasted uncleanness. Well, if he only had one convert, it was good because Billy Graham was converted under him. We don't have any revivalists anymore. Lots of our big preachers go to a town for one night. There's nothing in the scripture that ever says you can go to a town for one night. God Almighty. The greatest brain the world ever saw was the Apostle Paul, and he could go and stay with the people for two years. You can't get our evangelists to stay two nights. They've got such a tight schedule. Of course, they've used widow's tithes and offerings to buy a jet to get to the next place. I've got to say something about this man's wife. We're interested in men's wives, aren't we? I'll tell you what kind of a wife he had. This is a book called The Narrative. If you can find it, buy it. And soak yourself in it. Read it to your children. Let them know that all the men didn't live in the days of the apostles that moved this nation to God. There were some men dead to move without a financial backing. Listen to this. This account would be incomplete if I didn't refer to Mrs. Edwards, the wife of the prophet of the Great Awakening, Sarah Perpoint Edwards, passed from death unto life at the age of five. Had a conscious relationship with Jesus Christ at five. I had a precious lady came to my church, a church I pastored in England years ago. She was in her 85th year. She died at 95. She was the daughter of the, the eldest daughter of the founder of the Salvation Army. Her name's the Mara Shaw, which is French for marshal. If you ever see the book, get it. I'm trying to get it reprinted. Frail thing she was. She inherited from her mother a curvature of the spine. Did it stop her? No. Where did she go? She went to France, the hell hole. She got a basement and cleaned it up with society ladies from England that never used to do their own hair. But fire is the most attractive thing in the world. People came out of their castles. They came from their homes as celebrities and scrubbed on the floor to get a lousy place clean. Professors came from the Sorbonne. The prostitutes of Paris came. They said that night when they'd repented, men would pull knives out and guns and lay them at the altar. She turned the city upside down. I remember standing at the side of her, we were singing a song that she wrote, and her face was as craggy, she's wrinkled as a prune. I stood aside to see her, and there the tears were bouncing off those creases in her face. Particularly when we came to the last verse, when it, where she wrote, and she was singing it now, there is a love constraining me to go and seek the lost. I yield, O Lord, my all to thee, to save at any cost. There is a fire that falls on me as India Perun, destroying all carnality, dispelling fear and gloom. Come on, did you get a baptism of the Holy Ghost like that? Are you hanging on to your tongues? Did you just feel a bit better? Somebody tried to give us a prophecy the other night in our prayer meeting. You know, I tremble, pastor, to my toes when somebody says, thus saith the Lord. For if it wasn't the Lord, she's a liar. And God help her that she dared to take the name of God in vain. It wasn't, thus saith the Lord, it was her own opinion. Thou should not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Mrs. Edwards passed from death unto life, it says here, at the age of five. The Marashal told me when she was four, she was in a meeting. No, she was at the dinner table with her daddy, good old William Poole, and the family. And suddenly she felt a confrontation. No prophet, no voice, no balls of fire, no rushing manu in. But she said, I was four years of age and I entered into a living relationship with Jesus Christ. And at 85, she was burning more faces than she did then, obviously. She'd become the feminine Billy Graham of Europe. She went to Sweden, had revival in Sweden. She went in taverns and sang gospel hymns. There's a picture of her in Stockholm. If you ever go there, go to the art gallery. There's a picture of the Marashal standing there with that great gorgeous face she had, full of meekness and beauty. One man said to the other, you know, she's the purest girl ever in here. I wonder what will happen if one of the men tries to rape her as they've done with other women. The other man said, listen, that woman's purity is her safeguard. If you got near to her and looked in her face, you'd see such purity, you'd back off. You'll feel you're the biggest leper outside of hell. Now listen to this. She passed from death unto life at five fast. Isn't that wonderful? At 13, a singular reputation as a youthful Christian was already known to not a few. They would say, this young lady is from New Haven. This young lady is from New Haven. She is so loved by the great being. In other words, she's so loved by a holy God who sits on the circle of the earth, who knows the name of every star, who counts the nations of dust in the balance. They say that this great being, this great holy God, in some way or other, invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding delight. Isn't that amazing? She says, I'm going to pray for you. God will do that for you. So your children will see a living evidence of a holy mother. I had a holy mother. I thank God for that. I thank God for my precious wife's example before the boys. But she had recurring visits of God himself, shut in a little room in New Haven. The God that holds the earth up. The high lofty one who inhabited eternity. The God before whom Isaiah fell and said, I'm undone, I'm unclean. If you come to this altar tonight, don't come for help. I wouldn't pray for you. Come when you say, I'm undone and unclean. And then the fire will touch you as it touched, as it touched Isaiah. As soon as he, he didn't say, I need help. I want a better ministry. No, he said, I'm undone, I'm unclean. And he was a leading man in the world at that time. But here's this precious lady. She has a strange sweetness in her mind. Now, bless her. Sissy, would you like that? There's a strange sweetness about her character. A singular purity in her affections. She seems always to be full of joy. I tell Martha every time we meet Patty, she must never have any bad news. She's always radiant with joy. The only mistake her mother made was to give her a name like that. She should have called her Grace Joy because she's full of grace and she's always got joy. Isn't that right, Tommy? You don't say no anyhow. You'll be in trouble when you get home. Patty, you're a wonderful example there and I rejoice in it. Me, I'm just a rough old guy. But I'd rather scare you to death now than let you go to hell and get scared anyhow. She has a strange sweetness, a marvellous purity of affection. She's always full, running over with joy and pleasure and nobody knows what it's about. My dear Lord, if God visited me every three months, I think I'd know what it was about. Well, does he want to meet you in the closet? Don't you wait long enough. They that wait upon the Lord. Do you know what that word is? That Hebrew word is they that saturate themselves in God. I think I told you, Dr. Joseph told me, he could lay on the floor at eight in the morning, till nine, till ten, till eleven, till twelve, till one, without saying a word of prayer, without saying a word of praise, just adoring him. One day I concentrate on his holiness, another day I concentrate on his mercy, another day I get lost in his love, all the sweet, sweet, deep, deep love of Jesus, vast and measured, boundless, free, flowing as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me. Underneath me, all around me, flows the current of God's love. Do you ever have baptisms like that? Phineas said he had repeated baptisms. I've had them. I had a baptism in bed last night, yesterday afternoon, weeping over you folk, praying as did that great Englishman in 1500. There's a monument of him in Chichester, I think it is, Chichester. What was his name? Let me think. Richard Baxter. When he went to that town, there wasn't one family that had family devotions. When he died, there wasn't one family that hadn't. They put five galleries in the cathedral, brother. I got a special word for the pastor here. You know, we're so used to staging, we get everybody, don't we? Oh, come Monday night, we have a converted footballer. Of course, he's been a physical wreck 10 years. I turned the idiot box on the other day. There's one man isn't an idiot, that's Jimmy Swaggart. I tried to get him and I didn't get it, it got PTL. You know what that means? Pity the listeners. Here's little Jimmy Baker, the little squirt. Do you know what he said? He said, of course, Mr. Finney had revival, but he only had thousands. We have millions being born of God. Where are they? Are you going to tell me our divorce courts are packed, our jails are packed, the nation's rotting with VD and all kinds of sins, and yet we're seeing the greatest revival in history, that guy says. You don't know what revival is. Fancy him daring to talk about Finney. One of the things I wanted to see, I went to Finney's church in Rochester, New York. There's a sign outside, pastor, about that size, and it says, Charles Grandison Finney came into this city and in six months he had a hundred thousand people converted, drastically born again of the Spirit of God. I'd like to challenge Billy Graham and Oral Roberts and David Wilkerson and Jimmy Swaggart to team up and go stay in the city for 28 nights like Finney did. He wouldn't move till God split the heavens. These boys come and take a load. The biggest load they take is not a load of sin, it's a load of offering. We don't have an evangelist that can stay in us. We used to go to cities for six weeks at a time in England. Start at the grassroots, sleep in the tent, eat in the tent, pray in the tent, for six and eight weeks at a time, but we raised up churches. Two of them last year asked me to go back and preach the 50th anniversary of those churches we raised. We were penniless, we had no homes. If we got a tomato, if we got a banana, we thought it was the millennium. We lived on bread and butter and onion. And you know what, if I was young enough and had the strength, I'd do it again. I've got to find something here for you now, pastor, especially for you. Oh, no, this part is, let me skip that. They say the Puritans preachers feared more than anything else, they feared, they're terrified of plucking unripe fruit. That's done in every evangelistic crusade. We try and get people to the altar, they're not saved, and we lead them into damnation, not salvation. We will not pluck unripe fruit. They were afraid that they in their zeal for souls might lead people into a false profession of faith, and thus by the, be the means of their damnation, instead of the means of their salvation. We staged a crusade, Billy Graham said years ago, we spend a million dollars on a city-wide crusade. Now it's gone up to two or three million, and they list all the converts. We had 20,000. Tell me six months after if you can find any. And it says here, pastor, this great awakening in New England in 1724 that revitalized America, she was at the bottom, as low as she is now. And they didn't get some star preachers. They didn't get some millionaires to finance them. They didn't have big choirs. Do you know what they had? They had the Holy Ghost. Listen to what it says, to this greatest awakening in American history. In order the student of revival may understand the significance of this book, we will stress the fact that the great awakening which took place in 1735, this is for you pastor, it came in the ordinary course of a faithful pastor's ministry. They'd had normal services. Of course he was a weeping man, he wept in secret. And then one day suddenly, as dramatic, I love that word suddenly, the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly, are we seeking the Lord? Are we seeking blessing? Are we seeking miracles? The Lord whom ye seek. Shepherds kept their watch by night, and suddenly there was a sound of the heavenly hosts saying glory to God in the highest. They were waiting in the upper room, and suddenly there's a rushing mighty wind. And Malachi says the Lord whom ye seek, they've been seeking, and God who sees in secret rewarded them openly. One Sunday a service burst out. There was such an awesome fear on those people they couldn't even speak. Many of them had to be held off the ground. Why? Because of the holiness and the majesty of God. It was in the, I'll read it again pastor, it was in the ordinary course of a faithful pastor's ministry. I don't know much about this man. He says he loves me. I love him, I pray for him often. In the great day you'll discover many times he's gone heartbroken from this house because she haven't walked with him. And he's prayed in his closet, and the hold of power.